Nevada's Golden Age of Gambling

Chapter 1

From the Second Floor

Gambling is Nevada. Always was, and always will be. From the Native Americans that lived in its high country, and fished its prehistoric lakes, life in the desert was both a struggle and a gamble. Summer sunshine parched the land, and brutal cold could strand travelers in their tracks. The Donner Party learned the hard way about the region’s merciless snow.

Nevada was established in 1850 as a part of the Utah Territory. Over seventeen years, from 1841 to 1857, over 150,000 hardy souls took the long, arduous trek across the Midwest to California. The families that made the trip were looking for a new and better life. The many miners that came from the East were looking for instant wealth. Some homesteaded in the more hospitable locations along the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Near the Sierra foothills, new residents in the town of Genoa demanded self-government. Being so many miles from Salt Lake City, they believed they should be allowed to govern themselves.  That spirit lives on today!

On March 2, 1861, President Buchanan signed an act establishing the Territory of Nevada. Less than four years later, on October 17, 1864, President Lincoln signed Nevada’s proclamation of statehood. Things move quickly in Nevada, and from that date on, the state would see many changes. Towns sprang up around gold and silver strikes, only to disappear just as fast when the veins ran out.

Walking into a hard rock mine is no small gamble. Miners risked their very lives in that magical and all compelling search for silver and gold. Virginia City, site of the rich Comstock Lode, was the new state's largest city. Named after James Finney, (nicknamed Old Virginney), the city sprang up around the first great bonanza, the Ophir.  Ore was located at 160 feet, and a great rush to the area ensued. A German immigrant, Philip Deidesheimer, invented square set timbering, which allowed mining at great depths, even in the loose ground. Miners were paid up to $4 per day and worked at levels never before reached. At such great depths, the miners were able to work only fifteen minutes at a time. They were repeatedly lowered down thousands of feet, only to be brought back up a quarter of an hour later. Ice, taken from nearby lakes during winter, was brought in to cool the miners. The underground heat was the same all year.

By the time Nevada became a state, Virginia City was in full swing. The Wells Fargo Company was just one of the seven daily stage lines that made trips to the town. The city boasted three theaters and had a newspaper, The Territorial Enterprise, where Mark Twain made a name for himself as a flamboyant and imaginative columnist. The town also had four churches and six police stations, but even that was not enough to stop the tide of liquor flowing from the 150 saloons in operation. Drinking and gambling were a miner’s best friends, next to the occasional bath and some pleasant company.

Gambling was a fact of life in mining towns, and in Carson City, 36 delegates to the Constitutional Convention drafted a bill allowing all forms of wagering except lotteries. It was several years before the legislators were able to override Governor Blasdel’s veto of the bill, but it was finally accomplished. For another 38 years, the regulations changed often. However, by 1910, the Anti-Gambling League of Reno (led by the Women’s Civic League) had forced the legislators to once again outlaw games of chance.

The games continued of course. It was just a matter of using the basement or a nice second floor to offer the customers a little excitement. Aside from the offensive habit of law enforcement looking the other way, a substantial amount of untaxed revenue was also going into the pockets of the many businessmen engaged in offering these games. In 1930, a 29-year old Republican State Assemblyman named Phil Tobin took a chance of his own.

Using a failed 1929 bill, the Winnemucca rancher (with some help from local gamblers and Humboldt District Attorney Merwyn Grown) put together a new bill for the legalization of gambling.  The influence was brought by the likes of Reno banker (and owner of the Riverside) George Wingfield, and he certainly helped it pass in the Nevada State Assembly and Senate. Governor Fred Balzar was quick to sign the bill into law on March 19th, 1931. Tobin continued to the State Senate in 1932, and then quietly returned to ranching in the Winnemucca area after his term ended in 1936. He had originally become an assemblyman to help out his fellow cowboys, but the idea of taxing gambling seemed like a good idea too. The quiet rancher could never in his wildest dreams have guessed how much tax income the state would someday collect.

In downtown Las Vegas, the Northern Club got underway immediately. Licensed by the Sheriff’s Department, the partners Morgan and Stocker were legal on 3-20-31.  The Boulder Club and Las Vegas Club joined the Northern on Fremont St. by getting licensed on the 31st of the month. Also licensed was the Exchange Club at 123 S. 1st.

On the outskirts of town were to come two other early licensees: the Meadows in Meadow Acres (licensed on 5-2-31) and the Pair-O-Dice on Highway 91 (licensed on 7-4-31). Clubs across Nevada brought their gambling tables into full view and paid for their licenses. Half a dozen towns had clubs get their licenses and gambling underway by the end of the month. In Ely, the Capitol Club was suddenly respectable, and down the street, so was the Miners Club. In Winnemucca, it was the Central Club. In Elko, Newt Crumley licensed the Commercial Hotel just one day after the law was passed.  Yerington had (and still has) the L & L Bar.  The Owl Club at 50 S. Main Street in Fallon was licensed on the 21st, and the Tonopah Club was legal by the 23rd of March.

It was no surprise that so many clubs were ready to get licensed. They had the tables, they had the clientele, and now it was al legal, without the need for under-the-table payoffs to local politicians and deputy sheriffs. Now the fees were paid above board, but still to the sheriff’s departments. Since that meant no extra cash for the deputies, you can bet that all the clubs thought twice about operating without a license!

In Reno, just one day after the bill passed, the Bank Club began enlarging. The sound of construction, including a cement mixer, continued into the night. When construction was done, the club had a frontage of 55 feet, and a depth of more than 150 feet. Housed inside were the games of chance: three Faro tables, six craps tables, draw and stud poker, roulette wheels, chuck-a-luck, razzle-dazzle, hazard, wheels of fortune and a few slots. Base pay for the many dealers (all men) was $15 per day. Most of the table games had been brought up from the basement.  Patrons would no longer have to make the trip downstairs to play a little craps.

By 1931, the bulk of the gambling business in Northern Nevada had fallen into the hands of a syndicate composed of a handful of powerful men. The most powerful was George Wingfield, who had grown to prominence through the sale of mining claims in towns like Tonopah and Goldfield. He was a ruthless businessman and invested his time and money in buildings, casinos, and prostitution. If it made money, he was in it. By the early 1900’s he was one of the most powerful men in Nevada, and by the 1920s he ran Reno.  He controlled the flow of liquor and set-up his own banks. His most powerful allies were James Jimmie McKay and William Bill Graham. The two were old-time boss gamblers who learned the ropes while working for Nick Abelman when he ran the Tonopah Big Casino and other spots where Wingfield was the landlord. 

They moved to Reno soon afterward and had a financial interest in the Reno Social Club, Bank Club, the red light district, and also ran the illegal gambling concession for George Wingfield in the Golden Hotel adjacent to the Bank Club. Soon the Golden Hotel would also be licensed.  For most of this period, Ray Kindle was also an investor, but he acted only as a silent partner in the club. Other casinos to come under the groups’ control were the Wine House, the Rex Club, the Country Club and the Gay 90’s.  The finest gambling house in the area was the Willows. Opened first by Rick DeBernardi, he had a little trouble keeping the property open. After coming to Reno, Graham and McKay took an interest. After some renovation, the club reopened with the new name.  A sumptuous restaurant was constructed, and the club was a hit!

After six years from 1939 to 1945 that saw Graham and McKay sent to prison for mail fraud and the club run by Jack Sullivan, George Wingfield decided to sell the Golden Hotel, where the Bank Club was located. The two old-time partners retained the gaming lease until their partnership ended in May of 1952 when Graham became the sole lessee of the Bank Club until selling to Bill and James Tomerlin in 1955.

It cost the Tomerlin’s $425,000 to buy the lease for the casino, but they were only able to use it until 1962. On April 3rd a fire destroyed the Golden Hotel. By the following year, the New Golden Hotel opened, and it ran from July 3, 1963, until Bill Harrah purchased it on March 29, 1966. Harrah promptly shut the property down and soon had plans drawn for his Reno hotel.

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Reno 1952  Palace Club  -  Pit Boss Bob Davis with a cigar

Gardnerville circa the 1980s -  Sharkey’s Casino

Chapter 2

Desert - Not Wasteland

The Random House Dictionary defines a desert as a region so arid that it supports only sparse vegetation or none at all. That definition fits much of Nevada at the turn of the 20th century.  Lake Tahoe and Reno in the north do accumulate enough rainfall to grow beautiful pines, and there is plenty of vegetation in the eastern part of the state.  Copper Basin near Jarbidge in Elko County is a hidden mountain garden, but the area is still considered a high desert. To the south, a little town called Las Vegas was in the middle of the desert.

Surrounded by dry, parched hills, Las Vegas was, nonetheless, a necessary campsite for caravans making their way from Santa Fe to California. Dating back to approximately 1830, the good water and grassland were an oasis along the Old Spanish Trail. A way station on the mail route in 1851, the area was to become a Mormon mission in 1855. William Bringhurst had his small group build a sprawling ranch, which included irrigation ditches for crops and livestock. Although later abandoned, the fort, built on the ranch for protection against Indians, was to be acquired by Octavius D. Gass, whom later sold-out to Archibald Stewart in 1882.

After his death, his widow remained at the site until 1903. She then sold some 1800 acres to the San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad Co. The Railroad Co. developed the Las Vegas townsite and sold lots in May of 1905. By the time of the auction, several businessmen were ready to purchase lots in the new business district along the railroad tracks. One such free thinker was C. P. Pop Squires. Squires had recently moved to Las Vegas from Los Angeles.  Seeing the area as a fine place for a home, Pop arranged for the purchase of some businesses. Through the Las Vegas Trading Company, he and several friends bought what they could. When the townsite auction came on May 15th, his group purchased the entire block on Fremont Street between Fourth and Fifth Streets. They also purchased as many other smaller lots as their $25,000 bankroll could handle.

Over the next few years, Squires organized the Las Vegas Artesian Water Company and helped organize the Southwest Power and Telephone Company. By 1908, the small town was struggling to keep its residents.  It was at this time that he purchased the Las Vegas Age newspaper. Through the newspaper, Pop was able to urge the remaining residents to drill wells for home and irrigation use. He also urged business owners to build better shops in the downtown area. This would, of course, attract tourists, and also a somewhat more respectable class of ladies to the area. What could be wrong, the paper suggested, if the trains that stopped at the end of Fremont Street were to rest just a little longer, allowing time for travelers to sample the local hospitality? They liked what they saw and have been visiting ever since.

The town Pop left, Los Angeles, had the film industry and a growing population. Southern California needed more water, it was the early 1920s, and the Colorado River was soon to be tamed by a new dam. Originally planned for a site along Boulder Canyon, upstream from the dam’s actual location at Black Canyon, and taking its first name from that site, the present-day Hoover Dam brought Nevada into the public eye.

Although Las Vegas was not much more than a rail center for supplies and the influx of laborers, the building of a massive dam was just what the small town of 5,100 needed.  As 3.5 million yards of concrete filled the dam site at Black Canyon, massive amounts of earth had to be moved. The workers and money that the government put to work just 30 miles from Las Vegas helped the town grow and prosper, while most of the nation struggled. By the time wide-open gambling was legalized (just a year after funds came through for construction), thousands of technicians and laborers were looking for somewhere to spend their hard-earned cash.

Huge payrolls of more than $500,000 per month caused more than a few problems at Boulder Dam. A private police force was hired to keep supplies from disappearing, men from fighting, and cash from drifting from its rightful owners. Being out in the middle of the desert for months and months of backbreaking work was akin to serving a prison sentence. The unbelievable 120-degree heat, hard work, and no alcohol on a government-owned project were some tough things to ask from the workforce.

Getting the 5,000 workers to the site turned out to be quite a task. Not that there weren’t plenty of applicants, there just weren’t enough roads. Plenty had to be done before the first drop of cement was poured.  First came the living quarters.  Not exactly the Ritz-Carlton, they were no more than dorms or barracks. Mess halls, garages, warehouses, and machine shops had to go in next. Two concrete-mixing facilities were soon dedicated.

Sections of pipe were constructed in a new and nearby plant. The enormous size of pipe used to receive water from the intake towers made their manufacture at the site a necessity.  At over 150 tons per section, they were too heavy to be moved by rail.

Chief engineer Frank T. Crowe was eventually able to begin the actual pouring of concrete. Huge cranes were used to pour 15-ton canisters of concrete. Crane operators were so high up the canyon walls that signalmen with phones had to be employed to let the operators know where they were lowering their payloads.

As the concrete was poured in each section, the newly completed refrigeration plant went to work. Without its help, it would have taken years for the concrete to dry. Pouring went on nearly 24 hours a day, with a new canister dumped every 60 seconds. After some 22 months of pouring, the dam rose to its final height, taller than a 60-story building.

Some 96 men died during the construction of the dam. Heat alone killed over a dozen.  The machine shops also took their toll, but none fell into the wet concrete below.

It was over five years from start to finish before the dam was finished, dedicated on September 30, 1935. During those years the town of Boulder City was built. Just eight miles from the dam, Boulder City sprang up as a carefully planned government town. When it was first built, it was a dry town with no gambling. Prohibition got repealed, but the gambling remains outside of town.

To gamble and blow off steam, workers had to travel to Las Vegas. And travel they did!  By bus and private car, the workers joined with local hard-rock miners and cowboys in the small town.  Vegas was alive and rocking. On April 1st, 1931 the Boulder Club opened at 118 E. Fremont St. in downtown Las Vegas.  Aptly named, the club was organized by a half-dozen partners. Joe and Jack Murphy, Clyde Hatch, Walt Watson, Pros Goumond and A. B. Witcher put up a few dollars and brought a downtown bar into the gambling age.

Always a workingman’s club, the small casino did more than its share of business in the downtown area.  Manager A. B. Witcher, a banker from Ely, was a driving force in running the club, and always an easy touch for the dam-builder down on his luck, Witcher gave away one last drink to thousands of workers.  They repaid the favor by returning on their weekends